1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the cultivation of queen bees, and, more particularly, to a queen bee mating nucleus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the bee and honey industry, it is desirable to have the bees produce honey in a commercially salable size. One known way of doing this is to provide the bees with a circular plastic rim. The bees fill the rim with honeycomb and honeycomb honey. The rim is then covered at both ends with a plastic cover, labeled and sold. There is no need to cut, modify or otherwise process the honey, so compliance with Federal regulations relating to process foods are not applicable.
In some instances, these rims are not completely filled by the bees with honey leaving a unit that is deficient in weight or appearance. Currently, the honey is removed from the rims in these units and melted down to liquid honey which defeats the goal of producing honey in a honeycomb.
Another aspect of the bee industry is the cultivation of queen bees. There is a ready market for queen bees for hives that do not have one. The queen bees are cultivated by placing a queen egg or cell and a small number of worker bees in a relatively small nucleus of honeycombs. When the queen emerges, she thrives in the relatively small nucleus of bees and honeycomb until she is ready for sale. She is then placed in a box or cage and sold.
While a wide variety of structures have been employed for the nucleus, they have been generally unsatisfactory. Many have been complicated and costly. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,894 discloses an artificial nest for hatching bees which includes the use of a multiplicity of thin wood boards each having parallel grooves in one face from edge to edge thereof. The boards are then held together by one or more rods extending through the boards. Not only is such a unit expensive to manufacture and cumbersome to assemble, it requires disassembly for periodic cleaning.
Other attempts at producing mating nuclei include the use of wooden boxes with rectangular sections of honeycombs being stacked therein. A problem with this type of device is that it requires specially prepared or cut pieces of honeycomb. Other known devices require special means of introducing the honeycomb into the mating nucleus.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a simple and economical queen bee mating nucleus which is especially adapted to utilize the defective honeycomb rings which have heretofore been inefficiently melted down for liquid honey.